Lutheran roots and seeds of protest: The life and legacy of Daniel Alexander Payne

Daniel Alexander Payne was born in 1811 in Charleston, S.C. From a young age, he yearned to study the classics and became drawn to John Brown’s Self-Interpreting Bible.

In 1835, the Evangelical Lutheran Society of Inquiry on Missions offered a scholarship to support an African American for four years of study at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (now United Lutheran Seminary).